Games Analysis |OT| Time To Argue About Pixels And Frames!

We already knew that Series X software stack was in a very early stage compared to PS5 which was initially planned to launch one year earlier and thus was in a more finished stage when both consoles launched. There were several developers confirming the same. Xbox had to wait for the full RDNA2 spec (confirmed by Xbox) which’s why the SDK was not fully ready.

1 Like

All I’m saying is that if this is all Greek to someone, then you may as well be saying “I, a person who posts on an Xbox enthusiast forum, am telling you that the pixie dust in the Xbox consoles is of a higher grade and takes longer to mature”. I don’t know much about the tech, and I don’t hang out on enough places online to get independent verification.

I’m not calling you a liar or anything like that, far from it; it’s just that I try to keep context in mind when I read things on the internet and I, for personal reasons, am generally skeptical of things that can basically read as “convenient excuse but it’ll totally work out, trust me.”

If this is all true, and the Series consoles will get even better, then that’s terrific news as far as I’m concerned, because I’m unhealthily fixated on my Series X.

If DF is coming to the same conclusion, then you know that it is correct.

If you’re referring to the video that Senua posted above, it’s on my to-watch list :smiley: I agree that DF saying it would count as confirmation!

1 Like

The tools issue didn’t originate after the fact as an excuse by Xbox fans. It was known in June 2020 when the June GDK documents leaked where MS explicitly said there were known issues. There were also various devs confirming it around the launch window too, and yet more devs told DF the same thing. Devs also were the ones telling DF that things were improving in the past as well as with the info Alex noted in the recent DF Direct video. Most importantly, we can see the results ourselves as nearly all the games that had modes struggling on XSX at launch have been fixed and basically all new releases run best on XSX.

So we have MS privately saying it, DF saying it, devs saying it, and the proof is the in the pudding too. I dunno how much more something can be confirmed than all that. And devs have not yet started really exploring SFS or ML or mesh shaders in games yet. Xbox especially still has a VERY long way to go wrt us seeing what is possible on the hw.

9 Likes

This, the June GDK leak even mentioned that RT performance wouldn’t be final even after launch, which back then led to the speculation that no launch games would use RT on SX (and some dumber ones that SX wasn’t even capable of RT), though apparently some last minute devkit brought RT performance to be at least on par with Ps5 as there were some launch titles with them.

1 Like

I think the SDK and OS will take some more months to be in a complete position.

From that Digital Foundry video above, it looks like a console update is what made Control play better rather than a patch? That’s not at all what I expected. This whole time, I thought that the talk about tools not being mature meant that (simplistically) checkboxes were greyed out when devs were making a game and they’d have to issue a patch if they were able/keen to. The more I hear about this, the more it’s impressed on me that I’m ignorant :smiley:

1 Like

Yeah it is both. Some system level patches improve the performance of existing system APIs. Also devs will be able to use more stable features of SDK in coming months.

2 Likes

Ahhh, very interesting. Thanks for taking the time to let me know :sweat_smile:

My impression is that the GDK as a whole has 2 goals; next gen tech applications for XSX/XSX/PC, and cross platform ease of use (X1S/X1X/XSS/XSX/PC/Cloud/mobile). The cross platform applications are super well designed and quite mature by now. That is how stuff like Dirt 5 was able to launch during a pandemic while still looking great across a ton of platforms. The game’s tech director got asked about the purported GDK immaturity and he said tools were mature but then focused his explanation only on the cross platform dev environment component and praised it. When asked about next gen tech applications he agreed some features were not in or working at full capacity at that point.

It has been said that MS intended to not serve up GDK to devs until this year and let launch software be the older XDK instead. My guess is MS change course to focus on the cross platform aspects at the expense of next gen features due to the pandemic and feeling that being able to easily ship across platforms was way more important a priority for dev teams than stuff like RT. The result being that the past 6 months the next gen tech side has been improving steadily via GDK updates on MS’s end and in some cases the games improve w/o dev input at all.

2 Likes

Yea they said its from ps5 yet it has Xbox controller prompts

because as john tweeted they had a keyboard plugged in or something which must have confused the config as to what button prompts to show

Ah that makes sense

Tales of Arise | PS5 - Xbox Series S/X - One S/X - PS4/PS4 Pro | Graphics Comparison & FPS

Xbox One: 972p ~35FPS Xbox One X: 1872p ~35FPS PS4: 1080p ~35FPS PS4 Pro: 1440p ~35FPS Series S: 1440p ~45FPS & 1080p 60FPS Series X: 2160p ~50FPS & 1620p 60FPS PS5: 2160p ~45FPS & 1620p 60FPS

  • All versions have the framerate unlocked except for the Nextgen consoles FPS mode, which is kept at 60FPS.
  • Xbox Series X averages 15FPS higher than PS5 in quality mode. An 1800p 60FPS mode on this platform would have been perfect.
  • It would be a good decision to offer a locked mode at 30FPS (especially on oldgen consoles).
  • Slightly faster loading times on PS5.
  • The PS4 and Xbox One versions have cutouts in the textures and some shadows.
  • Its artistic section of the best of the year. A lovely use of the Unreal Engine.
4 Likes

How does that work exactly? Wouldn’t it just default to keyboard prompts instead? Or do devs just leave the Xbox prompts in on the game until release?

Quality mode seems perfect for VRR on SX, it would be essentially.

But yeah, without VRR a single higher than 1800p mode at 60 would make too much sense for xbox.

15 FPS higher is a big difference. Differences are getting bigger and bigger.

1 Like

Tried it yesterday and it feels great at graphics mode, at times it does dip below 60fps but it’s definitely playable. I just tested it for myself with VRR disabled and it’s just sluggish really. This video really shows it.

It is unfortunate that in both modes there’s quite a bit of pop in.

1 Like